2011 NCAA national championship :UConn's title win a sore sight

HOUSTON -- It was a fun NCAA tournament.

It was a fun NCAA tournament.

It was a fun NCAA tournament.

Keep saying that for as long as it takes to rid your brain of the memory of the way it ended. Otherwise, you might be scarred for life.

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Richard Mackson/US PresswireUConn's win over Butler in the national championship game was no thing of beauty.

Through the first 66 games of the biggest and arguably the wildest tourney ever, there was an abundance of excitement and drama and surprise. Then they played game No. 67 and the thing ended with a bomb of historic proportions. Connecticut capped its quantum leap from ninth place in the Big East to first place in America by beating bricklaying Butler 53-41 on Monday night, in a game that was so train-wreck terrible to watch it set the sport back to the hook-shot days.

Actually, that's an insult to the hook-shot days. Even back then, the ball went in the basket more often than it did in Reliant Stadium. The teams' combined field goal percentage of 26.1 was the worst in a title game since 1948, when Kentucky and Baylor shot a collective 25.9 percent but scored six more points without the benefit of a 3-point line or a shot clock.

The misery statistics from this disaster could keep coming for days, but here are a few more:

• Fewest total points in a title game since 1949.

• UConn scored 109 points in two games here. That marked the fewest total points in a Final Four for the winning team since Oklahoma A&M in 1946. The Huskies made exactly two 3-point shots in Houston -- and still won it all.

• Butler's three 2-point field goals -- three! -- were the fewest ever in an NCAA tournament game. Its 18.8 percent shooting was the worst in a title game and the worst in any NCAA tourney game since Harvard against Ohio State in 1946.

The Bulldogs -- ouch. For the first time in their brilliant two-year run to consecutive title games, they were in over their heads. A team much of America fell in love with unraveled one missed jumper at a time.

The biggest takeaway from Monday was not how well UConn played; it was the level at which Butler was overmatched. In the end, it finally looked like a mid-major team is supposed to look when matched against a Big East giant. The incredible thing is that a team that spent much of this season looking very ordinary put off this moment as long as it did.

A lot of credit goes to the relentless UConn defense that blocked 10 shots and simply shut down the paint, but Butler was just hopeless on offense.

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Richard Mackson/US PresswireBrad Stevens' Butler team ran out of steam in the title game against UConn.

Its most inspirational player, senior Matt Howard, was 1-for-13. Its best player, Shelvin Mack, was 4-for-15. Center Andrew Smith was 2-for-9 despite taking all of his shots within 5 feet of the basket. Guard Shawn Vanzant was 2-for-10. The bench didn't make a single field goal.

As the minutes went by and the missed shots multiplied, it actually became painful to watch. When the Dogs finally ended a 6-minute, 19-second scoring drought in the second half, the crowd roared with what sounded like relief from the agony of watching good kids play horrible basketball.

"Without question, 41 points and 12-of-64 is not good enough to win any game," Butler coach Brad Stevens said, "let alone the national championship game."

Former UCLA great Bill Walton, sitting courtside, once scored 44 points in the championship game. He outscored the Bulldogs by three.

To cap this black-eye evening, we got to watch a coach on probation accept the national championship trophy from an athletic director under investigation. UConn's Jim Calhoun, who was sanctioned by the NCAA in February for violations in his program, took the hardware from Ohio State AD and Division I Men's Basketball Committee chairman Gene Smith, who now will return to Columbus to deal with the brewing scandal in his football program.

I'm sure NCAA president Mark Emmert was thrilled to share the stage with those two as the confetti rained down.

Bottom line: This is a flawed sport at the moment, in terms of both rules compliance and quality of play. There are no great teams, and not enough clean programs.

But you won't find Calhoun apologizing for any of it -- not the ugliness of this game or the stain of winning it all while on probation. Apparently capturing a third national title not only moves the lifelong fighter into truly elite all-time company, it also allows him to revise history.

"I took full responsibility for secondary offenses that took place in my program," Calhoun said, reducing major violations to secondary offenses.

NCAA enforcement will be surprised to learn of that downgrade.

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Bob Donnan/US PresswireJim Calhoun accepted UConn's national championship trophy with Ohio State AD Gene Smith at his side; both have had recent and ongoing issues with the NCAA.

Despite the ethical squishiness of this situation, it's impossible not to admire what these UConn players pulled off. They're now the greatest tournament team ever, going 14-0 in winning the Maui Invitational, Big East tourney and Big Dance. They rode charismatic guardKemba Walker as far as he could go -- and when he finally wore down here in Houston, making just 11 of 34 shots in two games, they sucked it up and won with defense.

Calhoun said in an effort to camouflage his team's youth-related shortcomings, he hammered home the importance of stopping the other team.

"Down the stretch [of the season], we would literally take 50 percent of practice on nothing but defense," Calhoun said. "… That's much more than almost any other team I've done."

It paid off emphatically against a Butler team that guarded tenaciously in its own right, getting enough stops to hang around until its offense broke down completely in the second half. Calhoun credited the setup in Reliant Stadium but opined that the vast shooting background and tight new rims increase the odds of ugly offensive games.

"You need to understand that defense is going to really take you and hold you in any game 'til your offense gets going," he said. "I think that's what happened tonight."

The end result was viewer-friendly only to UConn fans. They'll unapologetically accept their third national title in the past 12 years, an accomplishment that moves Calhoun into truly rare coaching company.

At age 68, he is the oldest coach to win a title and one of just five to win at least three. The others are John Wooden, Adolph Rupp, Mike Krzyzewski and Bob Knight. Giant names in the history of the sport.

"It's very sweet," Calhoun said. "I have no bitterness towards anybody. I don't. You can write what you want; you can say what you want to say. I know who I am, where I'm going and what I've done."

Calhoun said he loved seeing so many former players in the crowd Monday -- Richard Hamilton and Ben Gordon and Hasheem Thabeet and Charlie Villanueva and many more. When the game was over and it was time for the trophy presentation, they all came out of the stands and onto the court.

Lacking credentials, they were asked to leave by NCAA security personnel. At first they refused, then finally relented.

It was just one more uneasy moment of NCAA-UConn relations on a night only a Husky could love.

Florida State Seminoles--Connecticut Huskies Recap

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Men's teams. Women's teams. No. 89 belongs to UConn. It beats them all.

The No. 1-ranked Huskies women's basketball team topped the 88-game winning streak set by John Wooden's UCLA men's team from 1971-74, beating Florida State 93-62 on Tuesday night. Playing with the relentlessness that has become its trademark -- and would have made Wooden proud -- Connecticut blew past the Seminoles (No. 20 ESPN/USA Today, No. 22 AP) as it has so many other teams in the last 2 1/2 years.

"I don't want my team to compare themselves to anyone," UConn coach Geno Auriemma said afterward. "I'm not John Wooden and this isn't UCLA. This is Connecticut and that's good enough."

Maya Moore had a career-high 41 points and 10 rebounds and freshman Bria Hartley added 21 points for the Huskies, who have not lost since April 6, 2008, in the NCAA tournament semifinals. Only twice during the record run has a team come within single digits of UConn -- Stanford in the NCAA championship game last season and Baylor in early November.

When the final buzzer sounded, UConn players sprinted across the floor to shake hands with the student section as fans held up "89" signs and "89" balloons bobbed in the stands behind center court. Two other fans raised a banner that read "The Sorcerer of Storrs" -- a play on Wooden's nickname, "The Wizard of Westwood."

After a brief huddle in front of their bench, UConn players re-emerged wearing "89 and Counting" T-shirts. As fans roared, the players bounced around the court before posing for photos.

Simply the best

Connecticut passed UCLA's Division I win mark Tuesday by defeating Florida State.

Longest Division I Winning Streaks

Team	Seasons	Wins
Connecticut (women)	2008-10	89
UCLA (men)	1971-74	88
Connecticut (women)	2001-03	70
San Francisco (men)	1955-57	60
La. Tech (women)	1980-82	54

It's one more chapter of history for UConn, and perhaps the grandest.

"It's pretty amazing. It really is," said Auriemma, at a rare loss for words.

Asked what he would recall from the incredible run, he mentioned a pair of experienced stars on this team: "I'll probably remember Maya Moore and Tiffany Hayes. And how incredibly difficult it is to play that many games in a row and win 'em all."

Connecticut long ago established itself as the marquee program in the women's game, the benchmark by which all others are measured. The Huskies already own seven national titles and four perfect seasons under Auriemma, and they've produced a galaxy of stars that includes Rebecca Lobo, Diana Taurasi, Jennifer Rizzotti, Sue Bird and Tina Charles.

The streak, though, takes it to another level, certainly raising the profile of women's basketball and maybe all of women's athletics.

Two days after beating Ohio State (No. 12 ESPN/USA Today, No. 13 AP) to tie UCLA, UConn toppled the mark in front of a sellout crowd of 16,294 at the XL Center that included Wooden's grandson, Greg, attending his first women's game.

"My grandfather would have been thrilled. He would have been absolutely thrilled to see his streak broken by a women's basketball team," the 47-year-old Wooden said. "He thought, especially in the last 10 years, that the best basketball was played at the collegiate level -- and it wasn't by the men."

John Wooden was 99 when he died last June 4.

There was a festive atmosphere throughout the city, where building lights gleamed blue and white, and it was as electric as any Final Four inside the arena. Charles and UConn men's star Kemba Walker sat behind the Huskies' bench, and football coach Randy Edsall was there, too. Former NFL star Warrick Dunn, meanwhile, was cheering for his alma mater, Florida State.

Fast Facts

• Connecticut won its 89th straight game, extending its women's Division I record streak and surpassing the men's Division I streak set by UCLA from 1971-74.

• Maya Moore scored a career-high 41 points to lead the Huskies -- the second most in Connecticut women's history, trailing only Nykesha Sales' record of 46.

• The 31-point margin of victory was the 53rd by the Huskies of at least 30 points during the win streak.

• The win also ties the NCAA women's Division I record for longest home win streak at 69 straight games.

-- ESPN Stats & Information

With the game tied at 6, Moore and UConn (11-0) took command. The senior All-American had seven points during a 15-2 run to give Connecticut its first double-digit lead, and Moore's fadeaway jumper from the baseline extended the advantage to 34-15. Florida State (9-3) made a quick run to cut the lead to 11, but the Huskies weren't about to let anyone spoil this night.

UConn ripped off the next 16 points, capped by consecutive 3-pointers from Hartley and a pull-up by Moore. Auriemma gave Hartley a kiss at the next timeout, and the tough-to-please coach was still grinning at halftime.

"She doesn't feel any of this," Auriemma said as he left the court. "She's kind of immune to all of this as a freshman. I love kids like that."

With a minute left to play and victory assured, Moore stood up and whirled a towel around her head. The All-American tossed it in the air briefly before sitting down for the final seconds, beaming as she and her teammates on the bench yelled encouragement at the players on the floor.

"All you guys from Florida State, it wasn't easy to be part of all of this," Auriemma said. "I hope you don't feel disrespected by all this. You played a heck of a game."

UConn's rise to prominence began in 1995, when Lobo led the Huskies to their first national championship and unbeaten season. Since then, the best players in the country have made their way to the rural campus in Storrs, 30 miles outside of Hartford.

The excellence and confidence that defines great teams defines this one because Auriemma won't have it any other way. Perfection is expected, not simply a goal, and Auriemma goes to extraordinary lengths to get it.

He goads his players with criticisms of their games -- sarcastic remarks that may strike outsiders as harsh but somehow trigger just the right response with gusto. He makes them play games of seven-on-five in practice. He rounds up bigger, stronger male students around campus to serve as practice players. He runs endless drills to hone skills the players thought they had mastered in junior high.

It hardly seems to matter who is on the floor because UConn players don't wear names on the back of their uniforms. The only one that counts is the one on the front.

When UConn -- led by Taurasi -- won 70 straight games from 2001-03, a record in the women's game, it seemed unfathomable that it would be toppled, like UCLA's 88. But what fans have learned over the years is that nothing this team does should be surprising. The Huskies have beaten 16 top-10 teams during the latest streak -- four more than UCLA did during its run -- and five of those wins came against the No. 2 team. It's been more than 17 years since UConn lost consecutive games.

"We never talked about the streak," said Charles, last season's national player of the year. "We were playing for each other, what we did at practice, all the hard work we did, and just trying to do it on the court. There wasn't anything about the streak."

The Huskies have won by any average of more than 33 points during the streak and rarely found themselves in trouble. They have trailed for 134 minutes, including only 13 in the second half. They've won back-to-back national championships, and are now one short of Tennessee's record for overall titles by a women's team.

Even before UConn tied UCLA's record, the two programs were linked.

Auriemma acknowledges that his team runs the same offense that Wooden perfected 37 years earlier. But it's not just the Xs and Os. The top block of Wooden's pyramid of success reads: "Competitive Greatness: Perform at your best when your best is required. Your best is required every day."

That's been Auriemma's mantra.

Greg Wooden, who lives in California, said he came East because, "I kind of thought that somebody should come here from the family and show support."

He also was aware that "certain players have said they're not really supportive of the streak."

But he came knowing "my grandfather would have loved to have been here to see this."

The day Notre Dame broke UCLA's streak, John Wooden was asked how long it would be before somebody surpassed it.

"I have no idea how long it will be before somebody else wins that many. I know it takes at least three years," he replied.

Try 36 years, 11 months, and 2 days.

Copyright by STATS LLC and The Associated Press